Best Actress goes international: An Alternative Oscar History

by Cláudio Alves

From 1956 to 1958, Deborah Kerr received three consecutive Best Actress nominations. According to such sources as Mason Wiley and Damien Bona's "Inside Oscar," she was considered a favorite for 1957's HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON, but lost to Joanne Woodward.

So, the title I gave this new chapter in my ongoing Best Actress series might seem a tad strange. After all, the real Oscars didn’t start honoring thespians for non-English-speaking work for a while.

Following Nathaniel’s advice, I’m only covering three years this time – 1956 to 1958 – a period when AMPAS nominated a grand total of zero performances of the kind, and didn’t even pay much attention to British cinema to add insult to injury. It was a time for Hollywood celebrating Hollywood, perchance in reaction to an awareness that the industry, as it existed then, was fast approaching irrevocable change. The era of the big studio was facing its twilight. The most international stuff you’ll see is more of Kerr’s unfortunate nominations, Magnani recognized for a George Cukor melodrama, and Bergman welcomed back to Tinsel Town by winning her second Best Actress trophy for one of her worst performances ever.

Alas, this isn’t a chronicle of the real Academy Awards, but an alternative Oscar history according to my personal taste. And, at long last, those pesky eligibility lists have started to include a lot of international cinema – the American public was more into subtitled movies in the 1950s than they are now – which means my Best Actress lineups are suddenly quite multilingual and multinational…

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"Elsinore" Leads the BIFA Nominations

by Nathaniel R

Andrew Scott stars in ELSINORE

Hot on the heels of the Gotham nominations here in New York, London follows with the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) nominations. Elsinore, hotly tipped to land Andrew Scott an Oscar nomination (finally) leads the field with 12 nominations while Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is a distant but still impressive second with 8 citations. Because these nods are overseas AND independent, I’ll attempt to explain some of the titles -- educating myself in the process, too, since I hadn't heard of a few of these.

Nominations and synopsis of sorts after the jump...

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Review: Not even Léa Seydoux and Catherine Deneuve can save “Gentle Monster”

by Cláudio Alves

Sometimes, the story behind a project’s making can be more interesting and engaging than the finished product. Such is the case of Gentle Monster, Marie Kreutzer’s latest and the follow-up to her critically acclaimed Corsage. Its development started during the production of that 2022 Sissi pseudo-biopic, when the Austrian director began contacting police, psychologists, and other experts who could help her develop a script inspired by the pedophile ring scandal that had been revealed a couple of years earlier by the Die Zeit newspaper. But what was born as an attempt at exploring the complex realities hidden in the sordid story took a turn when, after Corsage’s successful run, it was discovered that one of its stars was involved in similar criminal activity.

Florian Teichtmeister played the emperor to Vicky Krieps’ empress, and was sentenced to a suspended two-year prison term for possession and production of the sordid materials. For Kreutzer, an examination of realities far away from herself suddenly became a matter too close for comfort. The director considered scrapping the whole thing but instead reinvented Gentle Monster as a gesture of self-reflection cum self-therapizing through art. The main question put forward is one about how much we truly know those we believe to understand beyond measure, those closest and most beloved. The unknowability of “the other” is central and terrifying. Yet, the reckoning with this and other ideas remains frustratingly shallow, as if we’re witnessing a film still trying to find itself…

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Best Actress at the dawn of the Age of Television: An Alternative Oscar History

by Cláudio Alves

From 1950 to 1955, only one performer won the Best Actress Oscar from an original screenplay rather than a stage-to-screen adaptation. She was Audrey Hepburn, who took the prize for 1953's ROMAN HOLIDAY, at the 26th Academy Awards.

While most of the world was rebuilding from the brink of ruin, the USA, whose territories the war barely touched, transitioned from WWII into a period of booming prosperity. As discussed in my last alternative Oscar history post, this led to a rise in conservatism and the dreaded Blacklist. But as the 50s dawned on Hollywood, another existential threat rose to challenge the big screen. I’m, of course, talking about TV, that essential symbol of midcentury domesticity. If in 1950 the appliance was still a novelty, things changed quickly. Five years later, nearly 60% of American households held court around those all-too-tempting goggle-boxes. For the film industry, this was catastrophic, as it posed unprecedented competition.

People could now get what they used to get from cinemas from the comfort of their own homes. It’s not unlike the crisis caused by the rise of streaming platforms in our day and age. Only, back then, the American movie industry responded through an arms race for new forms of spectacle, technological innovations that the television’s small screen couldn’t hope to replicate. CinemaScope and other versions of widescreen filmmaking became standardized over the square-ish-ness of the Academy ratio. Genres like the Biblical epic surged in popularity, as did other marks of lavish opulence, musicals and the like. But also films that tested the Code’s limits, from Tennessee Williams’ adaptations to the gamine-lite (dis)pleasures of The Moon Is Blue. 

But how did this reflect on the Best Actress race, both that of our actual Oscar History and the one dictated by my personal preference? And what about the rest of the world? Believe it or not, Hollywood isn’t the end-all-be-all of cinema…

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AFI Fest: “Ray Gunn” misfires while “Queen at Sea” reigns supreme

by Brian Rector

Late in the festival season, AFI Fest often brings an opportunity for Los Angelinos to catch up on titles that received buzz earlier in the year while bringing a few new films to the forefront. For instance, Brad Bird’s new animated movie Ray Gunn had its west coast red carpet premiere on the final day of the festival. On the otheer hand, Lance Hammer's Queen at Sea followed from its Berlin Film Festival debut, where it won a cadre of Silver Bears, including for its director and the Best Supporting Acting trophy for two of its performers, Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall...

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